The following background information may present examples of specific aspects of the prior art (e.g., without limitation, approaches, facts, or common wisdom) that, while expected to be helpful to further educate the reader as to additional aspects of the prior art, is not to be construed as limiting the present invention, or any embodiments thereof, to anything stated or implied therein or inferred thereupon.
Typically, decorating a baked foodstuff, such as a cake or cupcake, requires the use of icing or frosting and other edible decorative elements to make plain cakes more visually interesting. Decorating the cake usually involves covering it with some form of icing and then using decorative sugar, candy, chocolate or icing decorations to embellish the cake. Decorating the cake can also include sprinkling a fine coat of icing sugar or drizzling a glossy blanket of glaze over the top of a cake.
Generally, a cake decorator uses, for manual distribution of these granular ingredients on the cakes, a simple device provided with a tray for collecting the granular ingredient. An idle rotating plate is situated in the center of this tray, on top of a support stem, and receives a cake to be decorated, arranged on top. The operator turns the cake with one hand and with the other hand picks up a certain quantity of granular ingredient from the tray and moving the hand closer fills up the sides of the cake with this ingredient so that the cake, during its rotational movement, incorporates part of this ingredient into the outer layer coated with a layer of cream.
It is known in the art that a type of decoration which is widely used for cakes or for similar confectionery products consists in ingredients in granular form distributed over parts of cakes previously coated, for example, with a layer of cream. Distribution of such granular and edible decorations may be performed both on the top portion of the cakes and on the side portion thereof.
Application of the granular ingredients onto the top part of the cakes does not require any special operations since it is easy to perform. Application, however, of this type of ingredient onto side portions of the cake which are generally vertical or in any case inclined is more difficult since it requires good manual skill and expertise. However in many instances, it is required to perform distribution solely over the sides of the cake, leaving the top part free of the granular ingredient.
At present, also in the case of production on an industrial level, this type of decoration is performed mainly by means of manual operations and more rarely using semi-automatic systems, which nevertheless require dedicated and specialized labor. This automatic system has numerous drawbacks. Firstly, with said system it is possible to obtain only a band of granular product with a limited and non-uniform height since the mound of granular product is unable to provide a vertical wall of granular product facing the cake. Secondly, large quantities of granular product fall from the cakes, also as a result of the movement of the conveyor belt, with the consequent need for recovery and recycling of the said granular product.
Other proposals have involved decorating the sidewalls of cakes. The problem with these decorating systems and methods is that they do not provide a means for decorating the sidewall of a cake is that they do not magnify the force applied around the hose, and they are not compactable for facilitated stowage and transport. Also, the handle used to control the gripping device is not easily accessible. Even though the above cited gripping devices meets some of the needs of the market, an assembly and method to coat a sidewall of a baked foodstuff, such as a cake, with a plurality of decorative granular members, while restricting coating other regions of the baked foodstuff, like the top region of the cake, with the decorative granular members is still desired.